LSI MegaRAID SAS 84016E?

[MeInMaui]

Hi everyone,

I'm in the process of ordering parts to rebuild my server for expanded storage and I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with the LSI MegaRAID SAS 84016E. It is a 16 channel hardware RAID controller.

In case anyone is interested in the background info, I'm ordering an Antec 1200 tower case (has 12 5.25" bays) and 3 Supermicro 5-in-3 hot-swap cages (for a total of 15 hot-swappable drive bays). The plan is to partially populate this now with my existing drives plus 4 or 5 new WD 1.5TB green drives, which just dropped to $89.99 at Amazon. The rest of the space will be for future expansion.

I appreciate any input. Thanks.

Aloha,
Mike

[MeInMaui]

Ok, let me broaden my question a bit.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a hardware RAID controller that does a good job with large file writes in RAID level 5? I'm looking at SAS/SATA controllers with a PCIe interface. Thanks.

Aloha,
Mike

[jerryt]

I am running a Areca ARC-1230 running raids 6 with 12 sata channels.

It is set to spin down all the drives after X minutes, has worked perfectly.

[razrsharpe]

I have a 3ware 9550sxu-16. 16 channel sata pci-x raid controller. It currently has 2 volumes on it (5x750GB raid 5 for 2.8TB usable, and 5x1tb raiIt does a fantastic job. I can record 5 shows (4 hdhr, 1 hdpvr), comskip 4 of the shows live, and watch a bluray off another volume. Nothing skips a beat . I haven't had a chance to do formal hdd throughput though... hopefully i will soon

I've had issues with spinning down disks using my consumer samsung disks. Using consumer level disks with power saving functions the controller can get confused and thinks the volume is degraded forcing a rebuild. 3 ware customer service though is excellent... they worked through a potential issue (disk corruption) with me for about a week over the phone, eventually mailed me a replacement controller... and it turned out the controller wasn't the problem (aforementioned consumer samsungs were). LSI bought 3ware so theoretically my experience with 3ware would translate to LSI.

I WISH i had bought the supermicro 5-in-3. I bought the athena power one to save a couple bucks and its SUCKS in comparison to the supermicro one... but i had already bought 3 of them and it was too late to return them when i found out they sucked. My disk corruption issue could have been the crappy in 5 in 3 i am using too... so stick with the supermicro one


So final recomendations:
- If using non-enterprise disks disable NCQ and any spindown/power saving measures.
-don't boot off the controller. Install the OS on a small (i used a WD 80GB) standalone disk... then if the controller goes south you can still get to the OS.
-if i were to do it again (build a 15 disk enclosure) i would buy one of the prebuilt cases from supermicro. By the time i added up the cost of everything (case, 3x 5in3's, and a power supply) i was about $150 shy of the cost of the case.... definitely worth it to save myself the PITA of casemodding to be able to assemble everything...

EDIT: oh and i bought my controller for about 1/2 price on ebay (new in box never opened)... so if youre too cheap to drop a $1000 on a hdd controller i would look there for deals

[gplasky]

Actually if you're looking for performance and large writes you should consider RAID 10. I know you loase more space configuring it that way but for performance it can't be beat. RAID 5 is not for performance but more for redundancy.
RAID 1+0 (RAID 10): mirrored sets in a striped set (minimum two disks but more commonly four disks to take advantage of speed benefits; even number of disks) provides fault RAID 1+0 creates a striped set from a series of mirrored drives. In a failed disk situation, RAID 1+0 performs better because all the remaining disks continue to be used. The array can sustain multiple drive losses so long as no mirror loses all its drives.


Gerry

[MeInMaui]

Excellent advice guys. Thanks!

Gerry, I'm mainly interested in maintaining adequate performance for writing up to 4 simultaneous HD streams while adding redundancy. Having said that, Raid 10 does sound interesting. Especially since drives are so cheap now.

Aloha,
Mike

[MeInMaui]

I decided to scale back just a bit. So I just ordered 2 of the supermicro cages and I decided to order an Adaptec 51245 (has 12 internal ports). I think that should take care of me for a while. Hopefully by the time I outgrow this, more SAS expander cards will be available. Thanks for your help!

Aloha,
Mike